We all have those moments when we have the perfect shot. Somehow, someway, the forces of the Universe align and whatever we haphazardly attempt is pulled off perfectly, without a hitch.

It may be a moment, like in High School when me and the Girl's older brother, Shithead, had sat parked in his old '78 Jeep outside the video rental store on main street of our pitifully tiny mountain town. He'd run into the bar (heh, "the" video rental place, "the" bar� Fuck our town was small) to get our order of Finger steaks and fries, and I'd been absently picking through the ashtray, the source of our funds for dinner, for cool-looking coins. I found a penny that was 50 years old, glared spitefully at the now-closed video rental place (we had planned on renting Blues Brothers for the 112th straight time), and chucked the penny forcefully at the door. It sailed perfectly into the video-drop slot.

Our town is small, but also very old, so the sidewalks are probably double, or even triple, the size of the standard sidewalks here in Denver, so my throw was probably around 13 feet in distance.

Shithead looked at me with astonishment, rooted through the ashtray for another "cool" penny, slapped it into my hand and told me, double-dog-daringly, to do it again.

I smirked cockily, turned once to look at the slot, my target, and turned back to arrogantly look him right in the eye as I let the second penny fly.

Another perfect shot.

I could try every day, 180 times a day, for the rest of my life, and never make two in a row like that.

Once, when I was about 8 or 9, we were chasing this kid, Red, around our small town on our bikes. He didn't necessarily do anything to incur our wrath, he was just the kid we picked on. We cornered him in the lot surrounding this little British girl's house. We knew we weren't allowed on the property, so we began picking up Crab Apples from the ground beneath a neighbor's tree and throwing them at Red.

Brit girl and her little 3-year old sister came outside to join in the fun of these 3 idiots chucking Crab Apples 100 yards at this poor kid we were after. The 3-year old was running around, squealing with glee, and we, of course, went out of our way not to throw in her direction.

At one point, I swore that I saw Red duck behind the family's old Station Wagon. I picked a particularly large, semi-rotten apple directly from the tree and heaved it at least 200 feet, angling its trajectory to just clear the car and land on the other side of it.

It was a perfect throw.

*WHAP*

The wet smacking noise, combined with a dull thud, told me that I'd scored a direct hit. The incredibly high-pitched cry told me that I hadn't scored the hit on my intended target.

The 3-year old then ran screaming and crying from behind the Station Wagon, at top speed, into the house, a batch of fresh applesauce streaming down her head.

Given another 100 tries, I could never throw that exact same apple the exact same way.

Once, when I was a senior in High School and a bit of a prankster, I had found one of those big, red, rubber bands, about 10 inches in diameter. It had broken perfectly at a point that made it one long elastic strand suitable for extending and snapping.

By "broken perfectly," I mean I cut it, intending to use it as a fiendish weapon.

If held correctly, under a desk, it could be stretched and released in the direction of a classmate, causing them a sharp pain and lessening the chance that a culprit could be identified.

I was walking down the hall, snapping my rubber band into the picture frames of the previous graduating classes, wondering if anyone I disliked enough would be na�ve enough to present themselves as an unwilling target.

While walking by the snack stand, a target appeared. A girl that I didn't necessarily dislike, but probably deserved a snap for being so smart and always wrecking the grading curves, was leaning well over the table, examining the possible snacks she could purchase. I recognized her from her white polka-dotted stretch pants, and they were the most enticing target I could have ever hoped for.

I spaced myself a perfect 4 feet from my target, aimed my right hand, extended my left hand to well above my head, stretching the elastic band to its fullest extent, and released, all while walking extremely casually by.

Two things I hadn't thought of.

One being that I had forgotten that no matter how casual I appeared to be, I was the only fucking person in the hallway, so probably wouldn't be able to pull of any sort of innocent act.

Two being that the possibility of two people wearing similar style pants, while remote in such a small population (150 students, middle school through high school), was still a possibility.

*SNAP*

A perfect shot on the left asscheek.

"OOOOOWWWWWWWWW, JUUUDDDDD, YOU JERK!"

Instead of the brainiac girl, Mrs. E.T.-Finger, my English teacher, turned, both hands clutching her ass, her face a shade of red I'd never seen and her anger and embarrassment flushing quickly up the veins of her neck and emitting from her eyes, like a flashflood of pain, spilling forth onto my guilty face.

"Uh� I� uh� I thought you were� someone else�" I stammered.

"SURE ENOUGH!" she screamed back at me. Despite her small stature, I was sure that, at that moment, she could easily have killed me with her candy bar.

I guiltily half-ran/half-walked away as quickly as I could, hoping that whatever punishment she had in mind for me would wait until I had ran away and would see her in class.

She never punished me, and I can only think that the embarrassment of what must've been a huge welt on her ass kept her from ever mentioning the incident to anyone.

Fast Forward to yesterday morning. That goddam fucking Marching Band, having taken Thursday morning off, was back in full force, now that I was mildly hungover due to the celebrating our 9-ball Pool team had partaken in after our playoff win the previous night (a dramatic win in which our opponent's best player choked on the shot that would have won it for them and our best player sunk the ensuing shot, winning it for us).

As mentioned before, I'd set my sprinklers up to point out into the street. I had forgotten that they only run every other day, so I quickly went out into the garage, fiddled with the settings and opened the garage door, so that I may target the approaching mass accordingly.

I saw the Band approaching. Oh, this was going to be sweet. If I'm not going to jail for swinging my schlong around in front of the flute section, then this will certainly get me a citation at the very least.

The sprinklers take a minute or so to get the water running through them, and I realized that, at the rate the Band was coming, I was going to nail the first and maybe second rows perfectly and probably thoroughly douse all of those hapless, innocent kids.

I had an attack of conscience.

Despite the fact that every ounce of my early morning headache was directed firmly at them, despite the fact that they sounded like they were all forced to play left-handed while chewing gum and jumping rope, despite the fact that it would be some of the funniest shit I could ever pull off, I wasn't sure I could go through with it.

While the Angel and Devil on my shoulders were shouting their respective opinions into my ears a la Animal House,

the sprinklers sputtered to life, spraying a fine mist a few feet in the air that acted as a Herald of the jetting stream of water that was to come in mere seconds. I thought, "Oh well, it's too late now. Shut the fuck up, Angel."

Then I saw him.

The nice, quiet, unassuming, bleached-hair, trampoline-bouncing, Boy-Scout from next door, Jake, was playing trumpet in the first row, second from the end, directly in the path of the first sprinklerhead.

My house is the first one Jake hits whenever he's selling something for the Boy Scouts because he knows I'm a sucker. His father gave me about $300 worth of coral for my saltwater fishtank, for nothing other than he wanted rid of it and I'm a good neighbor. While Jake jumps on the other neighbor's trampoline and I sit on the back patio and drink beer and smoke, I shout at him different tricks to try, and he pulls them off with the form and grace of a Gold-Medalist. He came over to ask to borrow something once, and ended up watching the second period of the University of Denver's National Championship Hockey game with me and some friends.

I really like this kid.

For once, I have to do what I can to STOP the perfect shot.

It would have been perfect too.

I could feel the ambient air around me charged with anticipation of the coming shot's perfection, my one chance at revenge for the theft of my peaceful mornings by the talentless Marching Band.

I hit the "Off" switch the exact instant the water was starting, and a flaccid stream of water spurted once out of the sprinklers, landing 5 feet away on the sidewalk.

A couple students turned and looked at the sprinklers suspiciously, but then quickly focused their attention back on their marching and awful attempt at music. Except for Jake, who caught sight of me, lurking in the shadows of my garage (wearing underwear this time), and gave me a big, friendly smile and wave of his trumpet.

Revenge thwarted, but perspective gained, I guess.

And the Band played on.